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Exit Wounds (2001)

Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

Tagline: " What Can Two Men Do Against A Gang Of Crooked Cops? Whatever It Takes."

Run Time: An 101 excruciating minutes. Sigh.

Review by Karl Hoegle

Let me start this review (my first!) out with an astonishing fact: OUR HERO does not repeat not use the patented ‘get threatened with a shotgun, flip the shotgun around much to the assailant’s surprise, and shoot said assailant with his / her own weapon’ move. I couldn’t believe it either.

This tragedy (Hey, it’s my review, I call this a tragedy. I defy you to prove me wrong! ) starts out with the Vice President holding a rally to pass legislation to keep handguns out of the hands of children. Who really is pro- gun enough to want grade schoolers to have guns? Enter Orin Boyd, OUR HERO who shows up fashionably late dressed to the nines in a charcoal grey pinstripe suit, just like in every lone wolf cop movie. On his way to the seating area, he notices through a slow motion zoom in that one of the motorcycle cops is wearing an earring, but ignores it. Way to go, Orin!

I can understand that he wouldn’t know all of the street cops that work in his precinct, but surely someone in the Secret Service would check I.D.’s for the Veeps security. At least someone in the police department would recognize that these guys are new and check with someone in security. But since this is the beginning of the movie, Steve shrugs all of this off and sets into motion the deaths of a dozen or more officers and Secret Service men. Thanks, Steve!

After the insipid speech spouting obvious lines about “keeping guns out of the hands of children” and “Let’s raise awareness and stop the madness”, the Veep jumps into a very non presidential looking armored limo and speeds off to his next speech. OUR HERO now uses his useless powers of observation to see one motorcycle cop pass a silver looking device to another and speed off to escort the Veep to the ambush. I mean his next speech opportunity. Boyd finally puts 2 and 2 together and you can almost see the light bulb go off above his head when he realizes that those guys were Nogoodnicks. He hesitates long enough to give them the time to get the Veep to the ambush site, a concrete bridge over a mere trickle of water.

There are at least 3 vehicles in the motorcade (it changes shot after shot) with the Veep in the lead. Two of the motorcycle cops attach the magnetic bombs to the side of the Veeps’ limo in plain view of the Secret Service who must be asleep at the wheel, as that sort of thing would raise a flag with anyone, much less a trained professional. A brightly colored helicopter then makes an appearance and hovers over the ambush… I mean bridge in total disregard for aircraft policy with either the President or Vice President. The Secret Service guys think this odd, but take no precautions, as the chopper is after all, brightly colored and all. Hell, it even sports a smiley face!

The chopper in question hovers over the bridge just long enough for Orin Boyd to catch up and try to foil the abduction, and OUR HERO shows up in the nick of time®. A bread van pulls up to the other end of the bridge and the two cops on duty rather nonchalantly tell him to move the truck, the Vice President of these United States is using the bridge right now and then turn their backs on him! After I picked my jaw up off the floor, the driver of the van pulls out two pistols and shoots the hapless officers in the back. Orin pulls up and yells “excuse me” and shoots the van driver several times to ensure his trip over the river Styx. Hope your widow had some sort of insurance, dude!

The trap is now sprung, one of the evil earring wearing motorcycle cop imposters shoots the others with a fully automatic weapon. Only in Hollywood can one find a plethora of fully automatic weapons available to anyone and everyone! Orin puts on the bread van drivers’ hat as a clever disguise and drives to the Veeps’ rescue, despite the fact that the Secret Service repeatedly orders all police officers off of the bridge. He runs over one of the fake officers and convinces the Veep to get in the van and go with him, a total stranger who has a badge, just like the ones the fake officers are sporting. Riiight!

The remaining Secret Service guys get shot up a bit more, so OUR HERO grabs the Vice President of the United States from the armored vehicle (They shot out the bullet proof glass earlier) and throws him into the 3 foot deep trickle of water. A waiting Secret Service boat is waiting to pick him up, as it was there for just that eventuality. Apparently the bad guys have a taboo against shooting downward at a target that cannot swim. The phrase “Like shooting ducks in a barrel” comes to my mind, but hey.

Orin’s’ gun magically changes from an Uzi to a pistol and back again a few times, and he shoots the chopper while it is an Uzi, causing it to explode. Riiight. Later, Orin’s boss Fitz tries the “Bad cop, mad cop” schtick and fires him, but then relents and demotes him to the dreaded 15th precinct. OUR HERO scowls even more than usual, and speeds away in his brand new truck bought off screen and pulls up into a freshly vacated spot right in front of the front door to the aforementioned15th precinct. Only in movies. He goes in, seeing all kinds of mayhem and asks the Lieutenant Mulcahy (Jill Hennessy from Law and Order) who the ringmaster of this circus is. She smiles letting the audience know that she is indeed the Commander, but OUR HERO misses the obvious and they trot into her office where she tells him the usual ” No cowboy antics, no lone wolf tactics” etc. that we just know he will ignore.

She sends Orin Boyd off to anger management class, where he meets Henry Wayne, a T.V. talk show host who is flaky as hell. The teacher asks Boyd to share, his scowl deepens, and he tears apart the chair he was sitting in to show his macho side, all the while spouting his freedom from anger. Henry Wayne and the other anger junkies are impressed by this, or maybe his scowl turned them on, who knows. Henry offers to have Boyd star in his talk show, which he declines. Boyd gets fed up, and leaves, only to spy 5 street youths who look like refugees from an 80’s MTV video trying to steal his new truck.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict they all get a big helping of scowling whoop-ass. (Note from future: bingo!) In one unbelievable scene, a punk pulls a revolver out of his tucked in shirt (Don’t ask) and puts it aside Boyd’s face to threaten him. Boyd falls backward, kicks said youth unconscious, and does a one handed pushup and jumps to his feet in time to pose for the camera. Riiight. The gunshot brings the anger management class out of school, which fawn all over Boyd for his manliness. Somehow the female teacher of the class resists her primal urges and yells at Boyd for his anger, instead of ripping off her clothes and jumping him there. Boyd seems nonplussed by her steadfast resolution and pauses long enough to handcuff one youth’s foot to another youth’s wrist. This will certainly stop these 2 from getting away, but the other three could just up and walk away! Boyd then leaves the scene of the crime, something I’ll bet anyone else in America would be arrested for. The pistol and knives are lying in the street, where anyone can take them. But OUR HERO has better things to do than his job.

Cut to a fast shiny car driving up to the new age prison (You can tell it is the prison by the sign on the wall) where Latrelle Walker (DMX) pulls up to a freshly vacated parking spot (Guess where) and jogs in to see a prisoner. We find through exactly one minute of talk that the prisoner is not only innocent, but Latrelle’s brother. After his sixty second visit, Latrelle decides he is bored and leaves. Why bother to travel to the prison for a one minute visit? I’ll bet that Latrelle spent more time shaving that morning.

Enter a yellow Hummer piloted by T.K. Johnson (played very well by veteran character actor Anthony Anderson), who is our comic relief. In the passenger seat is Latrelle, they are on a mission to buy an expensive flashy car, as the one used by Latrelle earlier wasn’t good enough. They set their eyes upon a $285,000 Ferrari, and T.K. tosses a bag with $300,000 in loose bills in it to the salesman. They take off in it, letting the extra cash take care of mundane things like name, license, plates, taxes, etc. The sales tax in Detroit is 7%, so that works out to $19,950, and the difference between the $300,000 in the bag and the price of the car was $15,000. I guess that math wasn’t high on the salesman’s list.

Suddenly, night descends upon OUR HERO and he drives past a yellow hummer piloted by a Rasta looking dude, and sees him flick a lit cigarette out of the open window. There is a pile of no less than 40 butts on the ground already. Is this guy on the fast track to lung cancer? Hell, most people don’t smoke 40 cigarettes per day. Orin decides that his police sense that has let him down so often in the past is tingling, so he pulls over and spies T.K. in the bushes with binoculars. Using the binoculars he takes from a freshly handcuffed T.K., he spies Latrelle Walker and a shady looking character (David Vadim as Detective Matt Montini) in the midst of a dope deal. Latrelle tells Montini he wants 5 million dollars worth of heroin, and Montini gasps and agrees. Orin pulls his gun and advances upon the two, kicks open a gate, and just starts shooting. Seriously. No yelling of “Police, freeze”, “Surrender”, or “Put your hands in the air”, he just tries to kill them. They are understandably not in the market for an early death, so they dodge his poorly aimed bullets and fight back.

Latrelle fights with Boyd, gets in a rather nice face kick, and escapes. The other perp attacks Boyd with a gasoline powered concrete saw! I am sorry, but that thing has to weigh 30 or 40 pounds and he wields it like it was a banana split. Boyd overcomes him, and he shows Boyd his badge and tells him he screwed up a couple of months of undercover work. If Boyd would have identified himself as a cop in the first place, perhaps he would have identified himself as a fellow officer earlier? He probably still would have tried to kill Boyd, though… I know I would have.

As a bit of comic relief, OUR HERO is busted to traffic duty in a busy intersection where the streetlights are not functioning. He royally screws this duty up. We then cut to a locker room scene, where the other officers of the law are using a stun gun upon one another to prove their machismo. After Boyd beats up on fellow officer and part time Aryan brotherhood member Useldinger, a fight understandably breaks out and is quelled by Lewis Strutt, played by actor Michael Jai White. He tells Boyd boys will be boys, and smiles a bit for the camera. No way this guy is crooked, right? Boyd then meets future partner George Clark, played by Isaiah Washington. He fills OUR HERO in on who everyone is, and gives him a clue as to where the next scene will be shot. I’m serious, I replayed their conversation 3 times trying to figure out why Boyd goes to the storage facility building, but it must be some sort of cop banter I cannot decipher.

Anyhow, Boyd speeds off to the aforementioned storage facility and finds not only can he walk right in with no security whatsoever, but that the janitor, his wife and 2 kids are bound and gagged. Why is the janitor’s family there? Bring your family to work and get kidnapped day? Boyd sets them free, which lets them use an emergency door that sets off the alarm. A masked assailant sees Boyd and shoots at him, but the bad guys all escape with the heroin they came for. Boyd stays this time for the competent police to show up, and uses his powers of observation that have served him so well in this movie to spy a wristwatch worn by one of the bad guys on videotape. It is never mentioned again, nor is it salient that the wearer of said watch is black. But Boyd seems to glean something from all of this.

Martini shows up out of breath and Boyd tells him that the job was done by amateurs, and was sloppy. I disagree, they got what they came for, got away clean, killed no one, left no clues, and foiled Boyd who could have stopped the thing in its tracks by calling the real police when he saw the hostages. This infuriates Martini, who will use this anger later on in the movie. Sloppy indeed!

In the next hilarious scene, a decidedly female Lieutenant Mulcahy walks into the men’s locker room to yell at Boyd, presumably (and righteously, if you ask me) for not catching the bad guys last night, and ask why he was there in the first place since he is still just a traffic cop. She knows that she has to do this, at least until the denouement of the movie where Boyd will be vindicated for his suspicions. She pairs Boyd up with George Clark, and they look at each other like they were something found under a rock. Ha ha!

Next morning, and we find Boyd’s’ houseboat is a mess, and we see all his medals and commendations for exemplary police work strewn about. George shows up with Coffee for OUR HERO, who instantly awakes from a deep sleep and pulls a .45 on George. Those are some fast reflexes, as George opened the presumably unlocked door, walked in, and offered Boyd a cup of coffee. I guess Boyd slept in, and most people don’t have co-workers show up with a steaming cup of java to help ease them into their day. They get moving and spy the yellow hummer yet again, and George tells Boyd the owner is T.K., and he owns the nightclub called Static. If Boyd would have used his powers of observation earlier, why couldn’t he jot down the plate number and use the DMV data base to tell him the exact same thing? I am sure that competent cops do that sort of thing all the time.

Night descends with breakneck speed, and our dynamic duo show up and park where else, but right in front of the club. Seriously. Either their timing is world class, or they were filming a bad movie. Boyd tells his sidekick I mean partner to watch the back, he will go in and stir it up. A few gratuitous hooter shots to ensure an “R” rating and we proceed to find T.K. acting like an ass. We find out through some truly atrocious dialog that Latrelle bought the nightclub for T.K. He spies Boyd, and sets his two huge bouncers upon him. After a few improbable punches, the bouncers are sleeping peacefully on the dirty floor, and Boyd chases T.K. and Latrelle escapes out the back. He is halted by some strange words… Oh, yes, real cops do yell “Stop and put your hands in the air” to give the suspects a chance to surrender. Boyd likes to dispense with that and just shoot them. I guess the anger management classes aren’t working yet. T.K. escapes Boyd, who gets baffled by T.K.’s disappearance and starts looking for clues in the office, knowing that his lone partner in the back can handle those two. T.K. hits George with a foam board that bends when he strikes him with it, and causes instant unconsciousness. T.K. and Latrelle escape slowly. George comes to in time to find Boyd illegally searching the premises for clues. All he finds is a receipt from Latrelle’s visit to the prison. He proceeds there as daylight has now risen like a curtain, and talks to Shaun Rollins for two full minutes, double the time his own brother spent with him. Rollins just claims his innocence and tells Boyd no one can get him out of prison. Boyd almost forgets to scowl, but catches himself in the nick of time.

Boyd finds out from George that Montini was Rollins’ arresting officer, and sluggishly comes to the conclusion that Rollins is innocent, but doesn’t know what the connection between Rollins and Latrelle Walker is. Night falls yet again with alacrity and we find Latrelle meeting in a parked car with Montini. They agree that 5 million in heroin will be delivered, and Latrelle gets to see where they store it. Meanwhile, Boyd finds Henry Wayne in a nudie bar with a cheesy fake moustache on, enjoying some of the finer things in life. He asks this civilian to find out all he can about Latrelle Walker and Shaun Rollins. I am sure that police use a variety of informants, but this just seems ridiculous. He is a morning talk show host, for crying out loud.

Boyd then magically finds Mulcahy in a restaurant having dinner with some nerd, and he crashes it telling her about his vague unsubstantiated suspicions. Mulcahy tells OUR HERO to bring her something solid, and pauses before saying classic line number1, “Watch your back”. As if he was going to walk around like a brainless clod, barging into gunfights and robberies… OK, he needed that. We then proceed at breakneck speed to a scene where a hooded Latrelle is meeting the head of the dope operation, and gasp; we find out that it is Lewis Strutt! In a scene directly stolen from James Bond movies, he spins around in a chair and reveals himself. Actually, he says “I always wanted to do that, I swear to God I wish I had a cat” which was far and away the best line in the whole movie. And although you can’t see him, you just know that somewhere out in the darkness Boyd is scowling.

Latrelle asks to see the 5 million dollars worth of heroin, and the bad cops agree. They take him to the back of the garment shop they are using as a front, and say that they soak the t-shirts in a heroin solution, dry it under infrared lamps, and package it up and ship it. “Dogs can’t even smell it through the plastic”. I call BS on that one, as I know just how sensitive drug sniffing dogs can be, but since I didn’t write this turd (thank God) I guess I’ll have to live with it. The exchange will happen there at midnight, totally negating the precautions that the dirty cops took by placing a bag over Latrelle’s’ head so he wouldn’t know where the drugs are kept. He leaves, and Boyd meets up with Henry Wayne to find out that Latrelle Walker is really Leroy Rollins, Shaun Rollins’ brother. Aha! That doesn’t explain the one minute visitation, but hey. Also, Leroy / Latrelle is a gazillionaires, having made millions from the internet, as all gazillionaires are wont to do.

Latrelle / Leroy puts on a spiffy suit, showing both the cameraman and soundman in the background in the reflective shiny door, and goes off in his new Ferrari to meet his destiny. Meanwhile, Boyd is kidnapped rather easily by a van full of bad cops, including Montini and Useldinger. They handcuff him to a pole running lengthwise, and show him a needle full of bad stuff they intend to use to kill him. Boyd declines this painful death, and jumps up, grabs Montini’s wrist with his feet, and uses it to inject the driver with the hypo. Riiight! The driver refrains from pulling it out immediately, as that might endanger the film. He keeps on driving, careening off of parked cars instead of, oh, I don’t know… I personally would take the poisoned needle out of my neck, pull over, and shoot Boyd.

There is a flurry of kicks, punches, and general mayhem going on in the back of the van, all the while it flies down the street causing thousands of dollars worth of collateral damage to parked cars, and Boyd manages to kick one bad cop out the side door, where he instantly dies by getting both himself and the door peeled off of the van by a parked truck. Magically in the next scene, the door repairs itself along with a side mirror and we’re treated to even more fisticuffs. The van hits a strategically placed ramp, flips over, and catches on fire, all the while the driver labors to keep the poisoned needle in his neck from falling out while driving. Boyd spies a .45 on the roof of the van that now serves as the floor, as it is skidding down the street on its roof ablaze. He picks it up with his dexterous feet, and tosses it to his hands as Montini and Useldinger beat a hasty retreat out of the rear door. He uses the pistol to miss the chain of his handcuffs, and it parts obediently so he can escape a fiery death and fight the bad guys in the final showdown.

He enlists his former boss, Fitz played by Shane Daly, and his partner George who was sleeping as night fell yet again with its usual speed. Telling them he will find out where the final scene will be, he then goes to Latrelle / Leroy’s home ( I guess he used that pesky white pages thing) and starts fighting with him, as the bad cops told him that Latrelle wanted him dead. Those cops who wanted to kill him certainly wouldn’t lie to him about that, would they? After a few half hearted punches, jabs and kicks, they agree to join forces and Latrelle shows Boyd his “operation” that he is using to gather evidence on the crooked cops! No one mentions that that is not something that civilians are supposed to do, and Boyd never follows the law anyway, so that point never arises. Latrelle tells Boyd that they are going to take the stolen drugs and al the videotaped evidence they have to the cops, about the other cops… I think that there is a flaw there somewhere. How do they know who is crooked and who is honest? They further say that they will post the tapes on the internet, and as we all know there is no duplicity on the web, it will be believed instantly. Latrelle tells Boyd off camera where the T-shirt / heroin shop is.

Boyd proceeds to meet with Mulcahy, and tells her all of this. She disbelieves him until Useldinger and Montini show up and fire at them with fully automatic weapons. This convinces her, and the patented Chase Scene® ensues. The thin sheet metal of her vehicle is impervious to automatic weapon fire, and protects both Boyd and Mulcahy who try to escape the ambush. They then drive through a concrete barrier in the second floor of the parking garage they were at, (skipping the exit and not paying for the parking fee, by the way) and since this vehicle was manufactured on the planet Krypton, it survives the smashup of the concrete barrier, (no airbag is deployed) the subsequent fall of say 15 feet to the ground below, and drive off with the suspension intact. This infuriates the bad guys, who all agree that her escape defied the laws of physics she must be stopped, so they continue the Chase Scene®.After a series of shootings, Mulcahy dies in a crash that still fails to set off the airbag and bites the windshield rather graphically, kudos to the special effects people on that one. Boyd doesn’t even give her a second glance and steals a convenient motorcycle and drags the Chase Scene® on even more. A few more improbable events later, Boyd crashes the motorcycle, gets up, and with his back to a brick wall, he jumps over the onrushing vehicle and leaves the car with two dead cops and a car full of fully automatic weapons for anyone to find. I guess he is the reason that the Veep was at that particular city complaining that kids are getting and killing each other with.

Boyd, armed with new guns and this information, grabs Fitz and George and storms the heroin shop. Fitz admits he is bad as well, and points his gun at Boyd, who frankly didn’t see that one coming. Strutt orders Fitz to shoot Boyd, but seeing as how he is the lead actor, Fitz hesitates long enough for George and Chief Hinges (played by veteran actor Bill Duke) to blow up the door and storm in. This allows OUR HERO to beat a brave retreat, and he chases Strutt, while Latrelle goes after Montini. Both Boyd and Strutt run out of ammo at the same time, and so they use some fabric cutting blades like swords and fight for a bit with them. Strutt at one point actually catches Boyd’s’ blade, calling into question both Boyd’s’ strength and the sharpness of the blade. Latrelle and Montini fight a bit, but Latrelle being a bit smarter than Boyd, saves his ammo for actually shooting at the bad guys instead of the scenery and in an improbable move, uses his belt to fire the shotgun by tossing it in the air over the sandbags that are conveniently stacked there for him to hide behind. This actually works and some bad guys snuff it. Montini is winged however, and continues to fight.

Strutt escapes Boyd rather easily with the money, and flees to the roof where a helicopter awaits him. He tries to get away, but falls off after Boyd ties the rope ladder to a vent pipe, so he falls and impales himself on a different pipe. At the same time, Latrelle impales Montini on a rack of razor sharp needles used to store thread. The similarities are uncanny. This is Academy Award caliber writing, in my humble opinion. Finally, mercifully, the credits begin to roll, we begin to realize we wasted both time and money on this, and Boyd gets his old job offered back to him which he declines. Shaun Rollins is granted a pardon by Chief Hinges, ( I didn’t know that they could do that) and all is well, except of course that 30,000 bullets have been expended upon the city of Detroit, a few dozen cops and secret service men were killed, and Lieutenant Mulcahy died in the chase scene. Everyone has a few laughs as Henry Wayne and T.K. do a little show at the end, talking about all manner of disgusting bodily functions, ranging from excretion, penis size, and ending up in racial epithets.

Karl Hoegle (Jan 2008)

Afterthoughts

This movie was bad, but not bad enough to make me swear off Steven Seagal movies, so I guess that I am in for a lot more pain. I liked Executive Decision better, as OUR HERO was in it for like 5 minutes. Even he couldn’t screw that brief a time on screen up.

8 comments to Exit Wounds (2001)

This was the last Steven Seagal movie I ever watched. I know he”s come out with a truckload of dtv movies since then, but I figured if he couldn”t be bothered to get them released in theaters, then I probably shouldn”t bother to watch them. With that said, I actually enjoyed this movie for the most part. The key is to simply turn off any logic residing in one”s brain, and it all makes sense after that!

The guy who posted this forgot something…this was, as far as I can tell, a movie. It wasn’t a documentary. It was meant for entertainment only. If they couldn’t do all that over the top stuff it wouldn’t be that interesting. Maybe you should watch Mr. Rogers. All the stuff he does is believable, (and weird enough…he was a sniper for the military!) Also, watch Wanted with Angelina Jolie. Great action scenes, but remember…it’s not real!

I haven’t seen this movie in years and even after reading the review, I still can’t remember what this movie was about—which proves that this movie is TERRIBLE! UGH! The review was 100% more entertaining than the film. Good job!